January 5, 2015

The inaugural issue of Walking the Worlds: A Biannual Journal of Polytheism and Spiritwork includes a major new article of mine, “Time and the Heroes”. Here is the abstract:

The Platonist Proclus (c. 412-485 CE) identifies the procession of the angels, daimons, and heroes as operating three universal temporal potencies through which we experience time in the forms of past, present, and future, respectively. This essay explicates the Proclean doctrine of the three forms of time in its context within his system and its wider implications, with particular reference to the form of temporality associated with the heroes. Proclus’ schematic account of heroic temporality offers a systematic metaphysical framework for key themes in the Hellenic literature and cultus of heroes, in particular the dialectic of untimeliness and seasonality in the hero as discussed by Nagy. The heroes are seen to embody a universal relationship of mortal beings to time. In an excursus, the relationship of heroes to time is compared to that of cinema as image of time.

December 30, 2014

I was honored to be invited by David Butorac to present a paper at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in Philadelphia, at the session for the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies.

December 9, 2014

November 17, 2014

A major essay of mine on the Demotic Egyptian text known as the “Book of Thoth” appeared in this volume, and I posted a version here. Since then, a new translation of the Demotic text has appeared, which is both accessible to the nonspecialist reader and affordable, though lacking the scholarly apparatus of the first publication. A new system of line numbering is applied to the text in this edition, and I have updated my essay to include these new line numbers in parentheses, so that the reader may conveniently look up the passages I discussed there in the new edition. This is the updated version of my essay:

October 26, 2014

I was honored to be invited by Vishwa Adluri to present a paper for his panel, “Ancient Philosophy and Vegetarianism,” at the 32nd annual meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy (SAGP) and the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science (SSIPS) at Fordham University in New York City.

I’m very excited about this new opportunity and honored to be in the company of so many other talented writers. My thanks go out to Anomalous Thracian, for his vision in conceiving the site, and to Red Elf for her tireless technical efforts on its behalf!

July 17, 2014

At the recent Polytheist Leadership Conference in Fishkill, NY, I was pleased to attend a rich discussion of henotheism by Raven Kaldera, Brandon Hardy, and Joshua Tenpenny. Since I have also written on the subject of henotheism and related topics, I decided to compose my thoughts on the talk into a brief essay. Hopefully it will eventually appear in a volume of proceedings from the conference which will include the substance of the original presentation in some form. My thanks to Raven, Brandon and Joshua for their presentation, and for all they did to help make the PLC so rewarding for myself and everyone else in attendance.